4EB Interview

My interview on 4EB with Ellie Freeman is now available on 
http://whereareyoufromau.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/agnieszka-brings-her-fighting-spirit-from-poland-to-brisbane/ Have a listen 
https://whereareyoufromau.wordpress.com/?s=Agnieszka+Niemira

New Haiku

thousands winks 
sent from the river
to me 

(c) Agnieszka Niemira 

So, I wrote this little haiku today. For those of you who have only a school based knowledge of haiku, haiku is not about 5-7-5; it is about capturing a moment in nature and taking the reader both into the moment and beyond it. 

Some Poetry of Mine from "waves whisper the shoreline to life"

i beg your pardon

i am told to confess my sins

to the male chosen ones

who have been given the power

by the other male chosen

to absolve me

i look at my sins with great curiosity

  perceptions

she will never find a husband

my mum would say

to my (male) friends

and i’d wonder

do i give an impression

that i’m looking

piece of evidence

a much told story

    the male god creates a man first

    then a woman

    from the man’s rib

a well-documented fact

    every man

    since the beginning

    has always come out of a womb

     

  

n-dimensional breathing

your footsteps

in my cells

echo

the intimately known mystery

my baby is out of my womb

out of my body

quiet for a moment

then crying

i stroke my son’s cheek   featherily

hello my precious   i greet him

    the words he has heard many times before

  

he stops crying  

opens his deep black eyes

finds me

we look at each other

i know him too

i know his face

    even though this is the first time i see it

terror triptych

1.

we watch you rape her

we watch you dismember her body

we watch

every night

2.

girls for sale

girls for the taking

3.

terror:

the use of organised intimidation

staying alive

she wakes

her eyes cannot find me

she screams   

      scratches her arms

looks for sharp objects

      scratches her body

      till it bleeds

cries

falls    asleep

wakes

looks for drugs

                   alcohol

                       cigarettes

                            anything

screams   

     scratches  bleeds  cries

sleeps

wakes

     scratches  bleeds  cries

sleeps

   

i wait   

             wait

finally  

              she wakes     aware 

meeting

her hair    a lion’s mane

her face    neither old nor young

her smile    knowing

her eyes    through-seeing

she senses a tiny movement hiding close by

she notices her    sees herself in her

universally united

under the sky of quiet constellations

              silencescream

in silence

you tell me your story

i see the scars

looking into your young eyes

i notice

there is beauty but no youth in them

the bloodstained images

you’ve brought to life

stay with us

we fall asleep regardless

-----------------------------   

    

your screaming wakes me up

i run my fingers through your hair

kiss your eyes open

hold you

your body relaxes

you apologise

i shake my head slightly

                           as if it’s nothing

waves whisper the shoreline

                             to life

  

ecowoman

she is unaware of his presence

much older than him    but he cannot tell her age

there is something timeless about her

old trees look like that

one knows  they have been around for a while

yet they have the incredible life force within them

the thoughtless cut them down

but others let them be

even desire their life giving comforting presence

her hair is mostly dark brown

with the shimmer of silvery threads

long  curly  messy

untamed

life matters

“I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?

How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and faeces?

Nadine closes her eyes and says something I cannot believe I’m hearing. “One of the soldiers cut open a pregnant woman. It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and forced us to eat it.”

Alfonsine  tells me she was walking through the forest when she encountered a lone soldier. “He pressed his rifle on the outside of my vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out.

The perpetrators include the Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers.

Before I went to the Congo, I’d spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I’d travelled to the rape mines of the world--places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. The violence is a threat to all; young girls and village elders alike are at risk. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo’s women is in serious jeopardy.”

(Eve Ensler, 1 August 2007)

the end

on the other side of suffering

the last female

honour

accused of adultary

       a gang raped woman

           

stoned to death

***

as the world collapses

i walk through it

as the bomb goes off

i read a poem

                       

                       the policy of yes

                        in crimson suffering

                                 liquefying

                        i go to work

pretending

i am solid

laughter

i come in quietly

the house breathes to its own rhythm

hello granny dearest   i say softly

she does not recognise me

but i know what to do

…i laugh

oh agnieszka    she smiles

and dozes off in her armchair

  

   ***

you come in a dream

    a different language

awake

my heart moulds itself

    into the shape of survival 

   

© Agnieszka Niemira

An excellent article on women, sex and standard advice

http://anntagonist.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/there-is-something-wrong-with-you/